


A Stolen Love

by hapakitsune



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: First Time, M/M, Post-Canon, thicc ass thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 17:24:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11257479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapakitsune/pseuds/hapakitsune
Summary: There were times it seemed Costis would suddenly recall my past and withdraw to give me space. I didn’t know how to explain that I’d had plenty of space at the palace, and that freedom, instead of giving me a yearning for solitude, had filled me with the desire to choose my own companionship, and that I chose him.





	A Stolen Love

**Author's Note:**

> I greatly enjoyed the totally heterosexual and not at all subtextual relationship between Kamet and Costis! Thank you to pageleaf for the beta and encouragement.

Costis is, unsurprisingly, an extremely determined lover. 

I hope very dearly that he never finds this record, which I keep not for the king, but for my own satisfaction, because he will be insufferably smug. It’s true that my experience is limited, but then so is his, and I’m certain he has an inflated sense of himself already. I can only blame myself.

When we first arrived, we settled into a house with two bedrooms, a luxury that took me several weeks to grow accustomed to. I’d been given a room at the palace, of course—a suite of rooms, in fact—but they had not truly been mine. Here I had the luxury of deciding where to put the bed, how many book shelves I wanted, what color of curtains I wished for the windows, and it was overwhelming. But a long dormant need to determine my surroundings surfaced, and soon I had begun the work of filling my bedroom with pieces of myself. 

I put my desk out in the main room we shared, next to a window that overlooked the sea. I would not have to worry about my eyesight quite as much with the sunlight to read by—though the king had seen to it that I had been fitted with a pair of spectacles, which did help my sight when I remembered to wear them. Costis often teases me when I have them on, saying I look like a little owl. 

Costis at first kept his distance in that way I recalled from certain parts of our journey to Attolia. There were times it seemed he would suddenly recall my past and withdraw to give me space. I didn’t know how to explain that I’d had plenty of space at the palace, and that freedom, instead of giving me a yearning for solitude, had filled me with the desire to choose my own companionship, and that I chose him. I blame the king; if Costis had not been instructed to accompany me, perhaps he might have realized sooner that I wanted him around. 

In any event, by the time a month had passed, we had grown comfortable enough with each other again to settle into something like a routine. It’s funny how much it resembled the nights we spent on the road. Costis would bring back food he had hunted or bought, he would prepare it while I watched and did very little to help, and we’d eat while talking, often about the different histories of our countries, comparing mythologies and stories. He never could hear enough about Immakuk and Ennikar, and it flatters my vanity to have him listen. 

Perhaps it might have stayed that way, and we would have grown old as friends, but after two months, Costis took it into his head that I needed to learn to fight. 

 

“No,” Costis said, adjusting my grip on the long knife I held. He had deemed me unfit to handle a sword as of yet, which had offered a small sense of relief to the panic I’d felt when he’d come in and declared it was time for me to begin training. “Like this. You’re too stiff.”

“I still don’t see why this is necessary,” I said, trying to mimic how he held his own dagger. “What is the point of living with a great big soldier if I need to defend myself?”

Costis gave me an exasperated look. “Show me your strike.”

It was an exercise in humility. I am accustomed to being a quick study—at languages, at stories, at maps. But this was not a language I could learn, and despite myself I grew snappish and frustrated. I couldn’t even do a basic disarming move, while every time Costis did it easily, sending my knife flying from my hand into the dirt. 

“So, so, so,” Costis said when I threw up my hands and declared it a lost cause. “You’re giving up already?”

I knew that I was being manipulated, but even so I growled and threw myself at him in a feeble attempt to knock him down. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know how strong he was; he had ripped off my slave collar with his bare hands while I struggled to hold a sword. Even so, I was startled at how easily he caught me and set me back on my feet without even having the courtesy to stumble. 

“Better,” he said with a grin he could only have learned from his king. His hands were still on my arms, and I became aware, very suddenly, that we were both clad in light clothes only and that his fingers could span nearly the entirety of my biceps. My breath was coming quicker, shallower, and it took me an embarrassingly long moment to recognize the feeling as arousal. 

Costis didn’t realize that, though. He released me as though my skin had caught fire and took a hasty step back. “We can stop for the day,” he offered, and I cravenly took the out. 

It’s a steep path to the beach from where we live perched on the cliff, but it is worth it to shed my clothes and plunge into the water. It’s warm in the shallows, and we have a private little cove formed by the natural shape of the rocks. That was where I went after to wash away Costis’s touch. It had been so long since I’d felt the pull of desire, not just because of what I knew could happen if I gave in, but because I had crushed that part of me away. I had wanted power, I had wanted what little freedoms I could earn, but I had taught myself not to want companionship. 

I swam until my body began to protest the effort I had put it through, and then I trudged back up to the house. I heard the sound of thumps as I approached and put a hand to where my dagger should have been only to remember I had left it behind. Creeping around the back of the house to our small courtyard, I peered around and saw Costis running drills by himself, shirtless in the sun, sweat glistening off his sun-gilded skin. 

This, on top of earlier, seemed extraordinarily unfair of him. I marched into the courtyard with the intention of saying something clever about Attolian preference for arms over wits, only then he turned and saw me, and I forgot entirely what I had been planning to say. 

It felt like I was seeing him for the first time. I was wearing my spectacles, which may account for some of it, but it was more than that. I could see him as we had first met in the hallways of the palace, the over-earnest stranger I had been both frightened and intrigued by, but I could also see him as the unexpectedly reliable companion along the road to Attolia, and more importantly, I saw him as my friend, Costis, who was honest and dependable and didn’t play mind games. 

“I love you,” I said and immediately clamped my mouth shut in horror. 

Costis stared at me, chest heaving in a decidedly unfair manner. He flicked a lock of hair from his eyes, then carefully put down his practice sword and said, “And I love you.”

Which seemed too simple a solution. I thought perhaps he misunderstood, or perhaps there was a nuance in colloquial Attolian that I was missing, so I came toward him until there could be no mistaking my intention, and I very deliberately laid a hand on his bare chest. 

Costis did not move at first, still staring at me, but just when my face had started to heat, he lifted his hand to cover mine and moved my fingers until they rested over his heart. It was beating as fast as mine. “Kamet,” he said, voice low and warm. “Will you come inside?”

“You need to bathe,” I said, somehow managing to keep my voice steady. “You’ve sweat enough for an army.”

Costis laughed and lifted my hand to his lips. I inhaled sharply as he kissed my palm and then released me. “True enough.”

I watched him go toward the well, then resolutely turned away to go inside the house. My hands were shaking as I removed my shoes and set my spectacles on my desk. When Costis came inside, I whipped around so fast I knocked several sheets of paper to the floor, but I made no move to retrieve them. 

We gazed at each other for what felt like ages. He had put a shirt on, which did wonders for my concentration, but it did nothing to conceal the look in his eyes—desiring and cautious, all at the same time. At last I gave a small nod, and Costis crossed the room to me. Even when he had been a threat to me, I had never been so acutely aware of how much larger he was than me, how easily he could hurt me—and I had never been so sure that he would never do so. He cupped my face in his hands, fingers rough with work, and said my name again, amazed, worshipful. 

His kiss, when it came, was firm; gentleness was for later, as we lay in bed in the dying sunlight. This first kiss was thorough and mesmerizing, so much so that I was pushing myself from the desk into his arms without consciously realizing it. When he pulled back, I reached out before I could stop myself and scowled when he laughed. 

“Shh.” Costis kissed the corner of my eye, the center of my forehead, then my lips again, a teasing touch that was as delicious as it was infuriating. I took matters into my own hands and wrapped my arms about his neck to pull us close. 

That first time, and most times thereafter, Costis seemed intent on reducing me to the basest coherence I could muster. I lost track of everything but his mouth on mine and the embrace of his body. It was like being drunk, or dreaming, where nothing was real except for him. 

The few times I had fumbled with another slave, it had never been like this. Then it had been transactional and furtive, a hurried exchange of pleasure before parting ways. Costis luxuriates in taking his time, in spreading me out before him as he did that afternoon. He undressed me, batting away my hands when I tried to help. He kissed the curve of my calves, the inside of my knees, grazed his hands over every inch of my body until I was fully alive beneath him. 

“Costis,” I said dreamily as he put his mouth to my neck. He made a noise of happiness, so I said his name again, and this time he moved down my body to take me in his mouth. 

I nearly stifled my cry, then remembered that it didn’t matter if I made noise. We were alone in the house, our nearest neighbors not close enough to overhear, and besides I wanted to. I wanted to and I could, so I moaned out loud and buried my hands in his hair as he sucked me, sloppy and a little unsure, but so doggedly determined to wring my pleasure from me, which he did. The intensity of it took me by surprise, and when Costis sat up, he rubbed a thumb to the corner of my eye. 

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, which was how I realized that tears were leaking from my eyes. 

“No,” I said, “never,” and I pulled him back down in a feeble attempt to return what he had given me. 

Costis is easy to please, which is fortunate, as I am still learning. There are volumes to read, of course, but I have to hide those from him so that he will be surprised when I wring a gasp from him. I take nearly as much pleasure in seeing him lose himself as I do when he focuses on me. That first time, after I brought him to climax with my hand, we lay together and then just rutted against each other when we had recovered ourselves, drunk on the evening light and the newness of everything.

Here is what he did tonight: 

After we ate, we walked down to the ocean together and sat on a rock with our feet dangling in the water as the sun dipped below the horizon. Costis told me about the king and how he had first come to the king’s service. He told me about loving the queen, about not understanding what a fierce love his rulers shared until a moment in the gardens, the same gardens where I had met Attolia again. How that moment, seeing them together, had sparked a longing in him that had burned until he met me.

“Well,” he amended, “it took a little longer than that. But by the time you returned for me when I was in that well, I knew.”

“I think I knew then, too,” I said. The memory of the fear and grief I’d felt at the prospect of losing him was enough even now to choke me. I should have been grateful. I had even tried to run later, after all, but Costis alive had by then become a necessary part of my life. I turned to him, kissed him to reassure myself once again that he was here and real, and then we went back to our home together. 

We sleep in what was once my room and is now ours. The breeze through the window is welcome on nights like this when Costis is determined. First, he undressed me with exquisite care, as amazed by the sight of my body as he was that first night. Then he used his mouth to render me boneless, and then he opened me carefully, something we have only just begun to explore. He is not a small man, and it takes time to adequately prepare ourselves, but oh, it is like nothing else. We have done the reverse, and I confess I do love being the one to drive the action. But Costis is so deliberate, so methodical, and tonight he set about wringing me dry. 

My throat is rough from shouting; I can tell I will be hoarse come morning, and I can still feel him on my thighs. We cleaned ourselves—or rather, Costis cleaned me first with his mouth and then fetched water for us both—but I suspect he deliberately missed some, the barbarian that he is. I keep drifting off in remembrance of his tongue at the dip of my spine, his fingers lightly pressing against where his seed spilled from me, and then jerking upright again. He is sleeping now, face slack, and where once I found him unremarkable and simple I know him now to be beautiful. 

I am grateful now to the Thief who is king. When he sent Costis to take me, he must have thought he was stealing a spy. But he instead gave me Costis, and together, we stole my happiness.


End file.
